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Emily Trask in Shannon Sullivan’s Antibiosis.

Shannon Sullivan's Antibiosis, at the Yale Cabaret, is situational drama: Put three characters in a situation, and see what occurs. The play mixes time frames so we don't get the story in a linear manner. It seems to come full-circle from the present to the present. In between are flashbacks, but not necessarily in the order of occurrence. There are also a number of soliloquies even harder to pin down in terms of "when."

If this sounds confusing it isn't, largely because of the dialogue's effectiveness in conveying the information needed to grasp "when" we are, in relation to another part. What's more, the format, short vignettes with blackouts, create drama by giving us the "high points" bit by bit.

And what is the situation, you ask? It concerns a brother and sister, Sam and Jamie, who have been lovers, and that Sam, a high school science teacher, tries to end that relationship, only to take up with a 16-year-old student, Zenith.

You might expect sensationalism or at least hand-wringing histrionics.

What's "off beat" about the play is that it doesn't go into either territory. The author, and director Ben Horner, demonstrate that such material, rather than being dark secrets coming to light painfully, can be reassuringly comical and touching.

And yet ... these characters are rather maladjusted, though their rationales are somewhat elusive. The characters are likeable, sympathetic, and, like anyone, simply looking for love.

But why these choices? Here the play is a bit thin because, as effective as these characters are in expressing their state of the moment, things get a bit vague when they refer to backstory. Mom drinks, Dad left. So ... bro and sis ran to each other's arms? And though we get the moment in which they first declare a romantic attachment, we don't get the moment when they actually consummated it. Discretion? Well, the play has no problem presenting Sam in bed with his student.

And about that student: "Z" first tells Sam she comes from an ultra-normal family. Later, she admits her mother died when she was born. She hid the truth, she says, because she didn't want to be Freudianized. Fine, and yet the play seems to pre-Freudianize its characters. It might be better if they talked a bit about what was really going through their minds, but that would make them characters in an older form of drama. The tendency now is full disclosure of emotion, reserve about motivation. Instead we get references to the macro- and micro- cosmos: colliding planets, micro-organisms that survive by shutting down.

Emily Trask impressively conveys different eras in Jamie's life. Particularly effective were her anger and resentment before we had any idea what she was angry and resentful about. Max Gordon Moore's Sam would benefit from more of an edge. There's one moment when he threatens Emily: "Don't ever compare me with Dad," and for a second we see a scarier big brother, but the fact that she ignores his demand tells us who is stronger.

In the end, Sam is on his knees with beseeching arms and strangled voice, as he spews out the imagery of the play: snow and galaxies and car headlights and white dresses, suggesting that the things people talk about to avoid more important topics may reflect on the real situation, just as Freud said. But it also seems to rely on poetic themes to explain behavior.

Antibiosis, which refers to a relation between organisms that is harmful to one of them, could indeed describe the relationships on view, but characters aren't simply organisms. A bit more psychosis and less biosis might've helped